Thanks, DAXC
August 24, 2016
I was never athletic. In middle school, my BMI was off the charts—literally hitting obesity levels. I was cut from the JV soccer team in seventh grade. I couldn’t run more than a mile without stopping. My first 5K was completed in 43 minutes.
In eighth grade, frustrated by what seemed like a complete lack of athleticism and coordination, an inability to catch any object thrown my way (and forget moving and catching things at the same time—that was downright impossible), I joined the cross country team. Without tryouts or cuts (because really, you either have to be insane or really want to run to voluntarily submit yourself to cross country), it was my last chance, joining this jumble of kids who were either genuinely good at the sport or, like me, out of options. On the first day, we ran a mile time trial. I finished third to last. My best friend (who was actually good) ran a sub 7-minute mile, something I’d never even dreamed of doing. She waited by the finish line as I struggled across it, glowing from the praise she had already received from the coach. Meanwhile, I had been lapped. I collapsed, unable to breathe, into the grass.
God, those first few weeks were hell. My work ethic and determination hit zero. I’d walk at least part of each workout, struggling through half-hour jogs and team runs where the top boys would sprint out ahead, drawing everyone with them—except for me. As the season passed, I consistently stayed at the back of the pack. I didn’t feel like I was improving. I still remember this one terrible hill on our course, nicknamed Turtle Hill for the pace at which runners climbed it. We had to crest that hill—a quarter mile long—twice during a race. I walked every time.
You’d think I would never set foot on a trail again after those fall months, in which I ran more distance than I’d probably covered in the past year. And yeah, at some points I really, really hated it. The workouts were awful. They were hard and made me tired and everything hurt after we did hills or sprints; I was slow and had no motivation to win—the coach didn’t even care about me. I was happy when I wasn’t the last girl to finish a race. My morale should have been at an all-time low.
Yet for some reason, come spring, I found myself attending the interest meeting for track and field. Expectant. Excited, even. And in my mind there was a voice saying, Veronica, are you insane? You HATE RUNNING. Why are you here?
But there I was.
Even then, I think, I was beginning to understand the seductive power of running. Every part of me should have hated it. It hurt. I couldn’t really breathe. Sometimes we just kept going and didn’t stop until long, long after I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. But I didn’t want to quit. There was a small, incessant part of me that yearned for more—a part that woke me early on weekend mornings, wondering, shouldn’t you be running right now? A part that sat heavy in my stomach on days off, pulling at my feet and arms to go outside, burn off some energy, exercise! At thirteen years old, I didn’t realize just what I was getting myself into.
For most of freshman year, running was chill. I attended a big public high school with a really strong team, so all attention was given to the top 14 runners (top seven were varsity, the next seven JV), a group in which I did not belong. A couple friends and I—the ones not cut out for competition—ran at the back, powering through 50-minute runs at our own pace, exploring the extensive trails that wound and snaked their way along behind the school, learning the names given to them by xc runners of generations past (Baja, Squirrel, Hedwig, Power Lines, Teenage Wasteland) and naming a few ourselves (007, for a particularly steep trail that made us feel like action-movie heroes, sprinting down). It was then that cross country became more social, although I still didn’t understand the juniors and seniors who spoke of the team as a “family” and cried when the season ended. I was content to hover at the edges, mostly unseen, mostly unnoticed. I didn’t need to be fast. I didn’t need to fit in.
That summer, I switched to a private school a fourth the size of my previous school. I ran with my old team until practice began, two weeks before the year started. Walking down to the track, I was nervous out of my mind, knowing that I was slow enough not to warrant a second glance, wondering if my experience here would be just as neutral as it was as a freshman. My expectations were low, which is probably why that day sticks in my memory the way it still does.
I’ve already written pretty extensively on the topic, so I won’t go into too much detail, but that was the first time that I realized two things: one (as cheesy as it sounds) that the team could, in fact be a family, and two, that I really did like to run. So much that I completed my last three years of high school with six seasons of varsity running (cross country in the fall, track in the spring)—something I, at thirteen, could never have imagined myself doing.
I met some of my best friends on the team. I achieved some of the biggest goals I set for myself on the track, on the course. Last June, I started getting up at 5:30—5:30!—just so I could make it to 6 a.m. practices. Despite the pre-workout dread, the anxiety in my stomach for an entire day before a meet, the hours and miles put in on weekends and breaks and off-seasons to stay in shape—I loved it. I exalted in it. Yes, I complained constantly about how much I hated running, how I’d rather be doing something (anything) else, and did we really have to do strides after 400 intervals, that must have been a joke, coach must have been joking. Anyone who listened to me speak during practice would have heard a fair amount of negativity. But I couldn’t stop going. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) 400 intervals. I liked the long runs. I liked the dinners at PDQ, the rowdy bus rides, the adventure of an overnight trip and hotel-room stay for states. I liked the quirky team traditions and the spirit and the energy at meets and everything there was to like about the sport.
More than that, I, the pathetically unathletic preteen for whom cross country had been a last-ditch effort, liked running. I loved running. And I do love it. Not just for the team, although the team does hold an incredibly dear place in my heart. I love it because of the inexplicable endorphin rush at the end of a particularly grueling workout or race; I love it because it is a chance to clear my head, to work out my problems. I love it because it is both an escape and an understanding—the pain never goes away, but neither does the joy. (Coach would love me for saying that.) It is an exchange of happiness and some of the hardest work I have ever dedicated to a single end. The feeling of improving—of watching those intervals pass by in 90 one day, 84 the next—is exhilarating. The feeling of crossing the finish line in under six minutes and being mobbed by the very same teammates who screamed you through that last 200—it’s just a little bit like flying.
I signed up for my college running club’s email listserv the other day. (There’s no way in ten million years that I would be running D1. Ha.) I’m still debating whether or not I want to join the racing team (the club itself is much more relaxed), but I’m definitely considering it.
My children—from the day they can walk, maybe even before—they will be running with me. I’ll find all the best trails. I’ll push their strollers.
They’ll see, then, when the gun goes off, when the breeze catches your hair, when the sun hits your face, when you take that first step—
that’s what it’s like to be alive.
